Biology Reference
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sediment sands between the two cratons of Zimbabwe and Kaapvaal. In this area, large
volumes of ancient Acheulean stone tools going back to ancient bipeds are found indicating a
sizable population of Homo erectus that lived here for a long time. After this era the tools of
Middle and Later Stone age are found and also early Bantu Iron-age assemblages forward to
the Mapungubwe era. This area is now the Makuleke Contractual Park after the local people
appealed to the land claims court and won the right to the land, which is part of the Kruger
Park. They decided to leave it as part of the Kruger Park but also build lodges in their area and
allow hunting to derive a sustainable income from their recently won back land.
An even greater enigma is the supposed ancient city centered around a mountain peak at
Kaapschehoop that has an African “Stonehenge” on its top called Adam's Calender. This area
overlooks the Kaap River valley that passes by Barberton to Kaapmuiden and the joins the
Crocodile River. The mystery within the uncertainty, to echo Churchill on the Russian enigma,
is how a city with a huge civilized population could have existed at a time when the world
population was only about 10 million before the time of the Fertile Crescent? Clearly, there
would have to have been a sophisticated agricultural backbone. The Kaap River Valley is an
extremely fertile valley with very fertile soil where my wife's family had a very productive
farm and one of our friend's farms nearer the Kruger Park was regularly raided by elephants
for the rich fruit orchards. It is doubtful that archaeologists will support the claims that the
Kaap River Valley preceded the Fertile Crescent and is also the civilization Manger of
Mankind. Early gold miners in the 1880s found unexplained gold mine shafts in the area and
more recently some have argued that there are Dravidian southern Hindu religious temples in
the area. While claims have been made that this civilization is 75,000 years old and that
Adam's calendar is the oldest man-made structure, it would be more logical that it is part of
the Schroda-K2-Mapungubwe civilization, but this will need to be further explored.
Once diamonds and gold were discovered in larger quantities at Barberton (1881- 1884) on
the other side of Kamhlabane from Piggs Peak and Jeppes Reef, the epicenter of Mankind's
Manger was invaded by armies of termite-like colonial powers mining for gold. Of the
world's 127 thousand tons of gold, some 50,000 have been extracted in South Africa, at a
value of $1.5 trillion. Much of this has ended up in Reserve Bank vaults. The biggest storage
of gold, 13,000 tons, is not at Fort Knox but buried in granite chambers behind 90 ton security
doors under Wall Street at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Southern Africa's
underground minerals are still valued currently at some three trillion dollars. The British
colonial takeover in the early 1800s in search of wealth drove the Dutch Boer farmers
northwards, where they came into conflict first with the inland Koi Koi and San Bushmen and
later the Zulu tribe of Mzilikazi. The latter was then forced into what was to become Rhodesia,
in turn displacing the Shona tribe north and eastward.
Mining magnet Cecil Rhodes made a fortune controlling water at the Kimberly diamond
mines and founded the De Beers Company. He later invested in the gold fields of the
Johannesburg area (Anglo-American) after gold was discovered there by Harrison and the
Julius Jeppe in 1886. Rhodes then pushed north with his dream of laying down of a railway
line from Cape Town north to Cairo to serve his own purpose, instead of using the waterways
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